Wednesday, August 17, 2011

This is a Salame Felino I made using both lean and fat from mangalitsa pork from Mosefund farm. Felino is a town in the hills near Parma in Emilia-Romagna. This salame is renowned for it's austerity, using just salt, black pepper, and garlic macerated white wine. Since it is also typically a salame made to be on the softer side, I chose to stuff these in somewhat larger beef middles.

I received some lean leg meat and some backfat from Michael Clampffer to make this salame. I used 85% lean and 15% backfat. They were both ground on the smallest die, which I believe to be 3/8". Along with the aforementioned salt, black pepper and garlic macerated white wine, I added t-spx lactic starter and cure #2. They were stuffed in beef middles which I soaked in mold solution. They were fermented for close to 80 hours and developed a really thorough mold coating. They were hung to dry in the curing chamber. Since some of them were needed after just the 3 month mark, they were removed and still very good. The salame pictured was aged for 4 months and is really quite lovely. Still a touch soft, perfect amount of black pepper and just enough garlic flavor to be pleasant. The one thing that really stands out is how tender the meat is, terrific for this application.

Monday, August 8, 2011

As you can probably tell, I didn't take this photo. It was taken by Michael Clampffer. This is lonzino, yes Lonzino. I know......it looks like no lonzino I've ever seen, either. The marbling is just sick. Looks more like beef. This was done in the exact same fashion as the capocollo from my previous post. The

loin was cured with only salt and cure #2. It was then removed, rinsed, then rolled around in peperoncino powder to coat. Finally, I stuffed it in a beef bung and left to dry for about 2 months. I think next time I think I'll add crushed red pepper flake as well. While casing these, a lot of the peperoncino powder was rubbed off, making the spiciness inconsistent from slice to slice. A little flake should provide a some consistency. It tasted as good as it looks. Silky and rich with a nice hint of heat. Awesome stuff.